what doesn't kill you
by ellesmer.joe3
Summary: Silvia, daughter of Draco Malfoy, escapes Azkaban, but is freedom really worth more than family? / a prequel of sorts to My Salve.


**i finally did it! :D**

**i promised those who read My Salve that i would make a oneshot of it about Silvia's time in Azkaban, and here it is ^^**

**so yeah, it's kind of depressing (cuz you know, IT'S AZKABAN.) but hey, hope you guys enjoy! 3**

**I DO NOT OWN AZKABAN OR THE DEMENTORS OR THE MALFOYS, ONLY MY OC SILVIA. HER BROTHER SCORPIO IS ALSO OF ROWLING'S CREATION.**

**leave a review! :) (the story's in Italics because it's sort of just a memory... sort of. *shrug*)**

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_To Silvia, starving to death was the least of her worries. Every time the guards would come into her cell, carrying a tray of the slop they called food, she would leave it there on the floor by the enchanted door, not really seeing the point of eating._

_ She would only crawl towards the tray and eat if she was ravenous, but not if she wasn't. If she wasn't, she would stare at the wall all day and think about the only happy thing she could remember: her brother._

_ Scorpio had always been very kind to Silvia, very gentle. He never let her down. He had always sat beside her during lunch periods, and did homework with her whenever he had free time._

_ This was all during their wonderful time in Hogwarts, which was also the worst four years of Silvia's life—of course, Azkaban was worse—but she was thankful that she had a brother as caring as Scorpio._

_ What would he be doing at this moment? Silvia thought. She imagined him sitting in the Slytherin common room—though in her opinion he should have been in Hufflepuff considering his wise behaviour—doing homework or talking with friends and such. Did he even have friends? Silvia had never brought herself to think about it, but now that she had, she couldn't help but feel envious._

_ Silvia never had any friends. As soon as she was sorted into Slytherin, she had a very hard time making acquaintances. Slytherin House had always been infamous for their very… imaginative welcoming committee. Her first night there and Silvia was told that she had to sneak into the Potions' cabinet and steal a flask of mandrake juice. Scorpio hadn't wanted her to do it, but Silvia did it anyway, and she wasn't caught._

_ Not that it had changed anything. She was still the outcast, always known as the daughter of the one who had betrayed Hogwarts, plotted with the Dark Lord._

_ The students never jeered at Scorpio as much as they did to Silvia, though he was quiet, always watching from the side-lines. Whenever the teasing got too far Scorpio would always step in, scaring away her adversaries._

_ She could still remember that dreadful day, however; the day she finally decided that it was time for it to end; the day she hurt the people who had been hurting her for four years; the day she took back her own life, and got punished for it._

_ It wasn't anything she was going to forget. Silvia killed someone out of pure hatred and rage. Sometimes, she told herself that she deserved to be locked up in Azkaban. She'd done worst things than her father. As much as Silvia wanted to hate the man she couldn't bring herself to. _

_ He was her father, after all._

_ Killing one of her demons hadn't brought her anything but more demons. They sat beside her every day in her cell, watched her, kept her at bay with memories that she wanted to forget. Forgetting was the hardest thing to do in Azkaban._

_ Occasionally, they would let the Dementors in, let them hover just outside the doors of the cells. Their chilly breaths would waft into the room, devouring any ray of hope that you could have mustered in-between reality and dreams._

_ It was hard to keep track of time, but Silvia guessed that in the past year she'd spent in her prison, only eight times did she have the honour of having Dementors watch her outside. But eight times was enough to leave her a crumpled heap of desperation and sadness._

_ Silvia hugged herself on the floor of her cell, still staring at the wall. In her arms was the only warmth she could muster, her last-living hope. She held it to her chest, envisioning it as a real thing. And when she thought of hope, she remembered her teddy bear: a little fluffy brown thing she always slept with when she was still young to go to Hogwarts._

_ For a moment, Silvia thought she felt the soft fur of the teddy bear, but it was only her hair. She was still in her prison, nothing in the room with her except darkness and misery._

_ Lightning struck outside. The sound had become Silvia's soundtrack. She heard it every day, fell asleep to it, woke up to it… not hearing it every five minutes unnerved her._

_ Cold air filled her cell and she started thinking about the boy she had killed. Had he been buried? Cremated, maybe? Did his parents hate her? Were they happy that she was in Azkaban? Did the boy's friends attend his funeral? Or did they just simply forget about him as soon as he was carried out of the castle, like many other Slytherins?_

_ Silvia thought that the Battle of Hogwarts was supposed to teach the Slytherins a lesson, that they would finally let go of their sour personalities and turn towards brighter features._

_ But then, which House was unrelenting, unforgiving, and unredeemable?_

_ Silvia didn't know why she had been sorted into Slytherin. Was it because her father had aided the enemies of Hogwarts during the Second Wizarding War? She had been perfectly happy to just graduate and live a happy life out of Hogwarts, maybe even make a name for herself in the Muggle world._

_ Then she just had to snap._

_ She was in her fourth year, her fourth year! Why couldn't she have held out for longer? Why couldn't she have been stronger?_

_Silvia had been counting the seconds in her head, more than happy to let them pass while she tapped her fingers on her cold cell wall. The dull sound echoed all around the room, fading away before another tap took its place._

_ Thunder shook the room, rocking her. Then she heard voices, yelling._

_ She pulled herself up shakily, assuming that the yelling came from outside her door. Using the wall for support, she walked to the entrance. Loud banging startled her, making her jump and rush back to her little corner at the end of the room._

_ It was then that she noticed the banging hadn't been coming from the door._

_ It had come from the wall._

But that can't be right. These walls are iron,_ Silvia thought, putting her ear to the wall. Louder banging made her ears throb, but she kept listening. A voice was calling out from the other side as well._

_ "Back away!" it said. "Back away, Silvia!"_

_ Silvia's heart dropped to her stomach. She knew that voice. Without another thought, she threw herself across the room. Though she was weak, having deprived herself of food for days, her limbs reacted quite quicker than she expected._

_ Just as she slid farther away, the wall exploded. Rain came pouring in, as well as iron debris that could have easily crushed her if she didn't push herself against the door._

_ Opening her eyes, behind the heavy sheets of rain, she saw a face she never thought she'd see again._

_ "Scorpio?" she said, yelling through the noise of the wind._

_ "Silvia!" he shouted back. Her brother was wearing his Slytherin robe, not a single thing over it. He was on his broom stick, making a panicked gesture for her to come. "Silvia, come on!"_

He's come to save me, _Silvia thought._

_ Through the torrents of falling water, she imagined a huge grin on her brother's face. And for the first time in months, she laughed. As she wondered how many people had had enough glee to still be able to laugh, Silvia ran for the massive hole on the iron wall, for her brother._

_ Not even thinking twice about it—because she trusted her brother with her life—she jumped, holding her arm out. Scorpio grabbed her arm and with a huge pull, tugged her onto his broom. Silvia gripped her brother's waist like a lifeline, and just as he was pulling away from the prison, the raindrops suddenly felt like ice cubes._

_ Silvia whipped her head around and found about a dozen Dementors, all hurtling towards them. "Scorpio, your wand!" Her brother took out his wand from his boot and handed it to her. Immediately, Silvia cast a Patronus charm._

_ For a while, the Dementors stayed back as she and her brother flew away from Azkaban. But Silvia's magic wasn't as strong as it used to be. A dozen Dementors became twenty, maybe even more, and sooner rather than later they were surrounded._

_ The ghouls took turns drinking from them, sucking out their happiness, their souls. Silvia could feel Scorpio's grip on the broom loosening, their flight slowing down._

_ And then they fell._

_ Silvia screamed._

_ But she found it odd how watching her brother fall onto the jagged rocks Azkaban's crushing waters made her stronger._

_ Maybe she wanted revenge. Maybe she knew that living to see another day would give her the chance to get angry._

_ Was that what she really wanted to do?_

_ Time seemed to slow down. In front of Silvia, dozens of Dementors raced toward her, as if they were going to catch her, stop her from falling. But in a millisecond her thoughts were clear. Silvia gripped the broom stick tight in her hand and mounted it._

_ She pulled, hard, stopping her descent._

_ Silvia had never been good with Flying, but she flew straight, holding her hand out behind her, a Patronus charm holding up. For some reason, she felt tougher. Her heart pounded in her chest. With a yell of defiance, a particularly strong wave of the Patronus pushed the Dementors back, and Silvia flew like hell, not even glancing back._

_ She didn't need to._

_ She knew her brother was there, beneath the waves, dead. She knew that she was going to avenge him, in any possible way she could._

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